capitalism
The economic illiteracy of anti-capitalists
Back in October, World Bank chief economist Carmen Reinhart recommended that countries borrow heavily during the pandemic. ‘First, you worry…
There's nothing wrong with profiting from a vaccine
A couple of shots to the arm and this will all be over. With today’s news from Moderna, last week’s…
What angry young French men want
Chatting on the café terrace with my new friends Didier and Emile made me aware that certain political ideas, which…
Is the world speeding up or slowing down? Depending on your politics, you can argue either way
Ah well. It was a nice try. A few years ago I wrote a book called The Great Acceleration, arguing…
How capitalism killed sleep
What can you make a joke about these days? All the old butts of humour are off limits. No wonder…
Of course the young like socialism – they’re taught to
It beggars belief that Jeremy Corbyn can, with a straight face, announce that capitalism has failed and we’d all be…
Welcome to the hard centre – and the future of British politics
The Conservative party has to move beyond Brexit and leaders: what is it going to be about? I suggest it…
Extraordinary power and simplicity: Lehman Trilogy reviewed
Stefano Massini’s play opens with a man in a frock-coat reaching New York after six weeks at sea. The year…
Interview: Meet Mariana Mazzucato, big-state capitalism’s new champion
‘It was Plato who said storytellers rule the world,’ observes Mariana Mazzucato, her powerful voice tempered with a beaming smile,…
From Stansted to corporate swank: superstructuralism has a lot to answer for
Amid the thick of the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale dispatched a plea to the Times deploring the lethal conditions of…
Letters
What do the Tories offer? Sir: I have been hoping that someone more eloquent than me would respond to your…
Armageddon averted
From 1945 to 1992 the Cold War was the climate. Individual weather events stood out — the Korean War, the…
Well of sorrows
The Red-haired Woman is shorter than Orhan Pamuk’s best-known novels, and is, in comparison, pared down, written with deliberate simplicity…
Heavy-handed
Oliver Cotton is an RSC stalwart who looks like a man born to greatness. Google him. He has the fearless…
Derek Jacobi as Mercutio is half-genius, half-prank: Romeo and Juliet at the Garrick reviewed
Out come the stars in Kenneth Branagh’s Romeo and Juliet. He musters a well-drilled, celebrity-ridden crew but they can’t quite…
How capitalism really works
Deirdre McCloskey has been at work for many years on a huge project: to explain why the world has become…
We don’t need research to change banking culture. We need jail sentences
Was the Financial Conduct Authority leaned on by the Chancellor to scrap its ‘review of banking culture’? Or did it…
How hard should we fight Black Friday?
Should we make peace with this imported festival of consumerism?
An Inspector Calls is poisonous, revisionist propaganda - which is why the luvvies love it
What a load of manipulative, hysterical tosh is An Inspector Calls. It wasn’t a work with which I was familiar…
Capitalism’s most dangerous enemies are on the right
The far left can’t win – unless it has the aid of a callous and complacent right
The real power of free markets: not efficiency, but innovation and dumb luck
The greatest mistake made by conservatism was its overly close relationship with neo-classical economics. This was a marriage of convenience:…
Paul Mason's Postcapitalism is proof that the left is out of ideas
The left is always eager to be told that capitalism’s final crisis is upon us – and it is always disappointed
The world belongs to Taylor Swift now. There will be no free-trial period
All hail Taylor Swift. How she must give baby boomers the fear. Not just baby boomers. Also those who came…
David Starkey’s diary: Why don’t we celebrate the triumphs of private dentistry?
To the dentist. And for an extraction. I hadn’t had a tooth out in decades. But the twinges when I…
Here’s what’s wrong with the ‘public sector ethos’
Matthew Parris 14 November 2015 9:00 am
An infuriating benefit of readers’ online comments beneath the efforts of a columnist like me is that as you read…